NVIDIA Titan Pictured...

[grok23]

Looks like EK have been listening after all - NO STUPID CIRCLES!

http://www.ekwb.com/shop/ek-fc-titan-nickel.html

Personally, I think I'll be waiting for the Heatkiller ones from Watercool, unless the noise from the blowers drives me to buy the EK ones in the meantime.

 

[Scoob]

That's not what I'd call a stylish block, rather boring looking in fact. Still, as nothingspecial says, at least no circles!

I think the Alphacool GTX 680's blocks looks really nice, especially the ones with the brushed black stainless steel.

Scoob.

 

[Crion]

So I have a conundrum... Does anyone think the the Titan is worth the upgrade from a 580 if doing a lot of gaming and compute? Skipped the 680 due to its crippled compute.

 

[s3ns3]

ofc if you can afford it.the compute scores blows away other cards.after all the chip was made for that.but gtx 680 too is good now.new drivers

 

[Scoob]

@Crion,

It might be worth checking how Titan compares to 580 SLI as you'd be able to pick up a 2nd GTX 580 3gb FTW and block for a lot cheaper I'd imagine - PSU permitting of course. I've not checked any comparision benchmarks myself, but it's worth a look I'd think.

Getting a Titan would be cool though, right?

Scoob.

 

[Crion]

@Crion,

It might be worth checking how Titan compares to 580 SLI as you'd be able to pick up a 2nd GTX 580 3gb FTW and block for a lot cheaper I'd imagine - PSU permitting of course. I've not checked any comparision benchmarks myself, but it's worth a look I'd think.

Getting a Titan would be cool though, right?

Scoob.

I've thought of that as I could do it but most of the benchmarks I've found compare titan with the 6xx sli.

Comparing the individual 3dmark numbers from separate benchmarks done on slightly different hardware but both done by guru3d, the GPU score in 3dmark is about 20% better on the titan. Of course, the price is the big factor. I could afford it, but it'd hurt the wallet for a month... I guess what I'm more worried about is for a $1000 card can I expect a bit more usable life than a card half that.

and heck yes on the getting a titan would be cool.

 

[Scoob]

@Crion

For longevity yeah the Titan and maybe a 2nd one at some point vs. a 2nd 580 now might be better. Also, you'd have a TITAN dude!

I too could afford a couple of Titans but, while I love the tech and desire the card to a degree, that price just puts me off. So much so, having waited for the Titan announcements, I just grabbed a pair of reference GTX 680's for far less than one Titan. I also picked up two lovely Alphacool Copper / Brushed black steel water blocks, and I still have change from what that Titan would have cost me.

Gaming-wise I generally score higher and I just game, so that's alright. Additionally, as I was still under that Titan budget, I got myself a new 256gb SSD too...just to ensure I properly blew my budget you understand.

As I type the first block is on, 2nd card on my bench ready for dismemberment lol.

As an aside, I would have happily stuck with my two GTX 570's if one hadn't developed a fault. I didn't want to upgrade just yet, but got royally pissed off when I kept getting hard-crashes during games. When I saw a replacement 570 was MORE than a same-brand 670, well, I decided to move on. When in turn I notced that 680 had come down a fair whack, well, I went for it.

Scoob.

 

[Crion]

Well, I'll probably go for it but I may wait until the second batch comes out since I really don't want to do business with EK after what they did to a bunch a us a few years ago with the nickel flaking issue. I'll wait to see what watercool/bitspower/swiftech/xspc have in store for the titan first.

 

[Scoob]

Actually, when I was looking at blocks for my 570's originally I specifically looked at EK kit. My reasoning being that, after the screw up with the plating on their earlier blocks, they had to totally NAIL the quality on subsequent blocks to regain their previously good rep. If they'd failed a 2nd time, I think they'd have struggled as a business.

All my EK blocks (I've had several now, including a CPU "supreme HF") have performed very well indeed. Still, this time around I've gone for Alphacool as I thought the EK "CSQ" blocks looked crap, also having to use their own SLI bridge solution was bollox as I already had some very nice Phobya SLI links. I didn't want to be forced to buy MORE bits I didn't like the look of.

I think the prudent choice would be to sit and wait and see what happens with Titan. If NV volume up - as they've suggested they will - possibly we'll see prices drop and Titan become more main-stream. Still, NV's top-end cards seems to sell just fine regardless of the price, so I doubt they feel any pressure to change things.

Cheers,

Scoob.